1826. } The Corn Laws. 37 
of need or luxury exceeding the demand; and that instant the common 
effects of a surplus produce in the market, aggravated fearfully in this 
particular instance by the utter wselessness of the commodity ‘to the 
ossessors):begins lowering the price in the most frightful degree. 
Then endiele already produced may not fall instantly, because it may be’ 
held;:and so maintain its price; but the labour. which produces: it: is:a 
commodity which cannot be held, and the fall of that is instantaneous.' 
For the: measure of corn which used to purchase twelve hours’ labour; 
we are now offered fourteen. From fourteen offered in fifty places, we 
come .to sixteen, then to eighteen, twenty, or thirty; by-and-bye we 
will take/even this only upon some condition; and, at last, we can take no 
more upon any condition at all. Then we come to the leaving an im- 
mense mass of men idle; an immense other mass: starving upon three 
days’ work instead of six; and all who work in distress, from being mi- 
serably ill paid. From the immense quantity of labour to be obtained 
almost upon any terms, any man who has a small capital and a desperate 
eupidity, becomes enabled to speculate to almost any extent he pleases; 
the ruin which he brings upon himself may not be a matter of much 
consequence to any body; but the mass of goods which he throws upon 
the market, at a low price, increases the glut, and aggravates the suf- 
ferings of all. 
» This then, at least, may be the condition of a country which had 
nothing but its internal trade to depend upon. We take it to be ma 
great degree the state of England at present; but whether it be, or 
not so, is merely a question upon the fact ;—suppose such a case—sup- 
pose the manufacturing population of a country to be greater than the 
agriculturists can (with justice to that population) remunerate and em- 
ploy—is not the obvious remedy that very export trade, which the advo- 
: eates of corn restrictions are now affecting to treat so lightly? Suppose 
two millions, or one million, of the people of England, to be employed 
in manufactures for the export-trade, we take it to be clear that, upon 
these people, as far at least as the plea of reciprocal dealing goes, the 
Jand-owners can have no claim for the purchase of corn at all. As they 
sell nothing to the land, they cannot, on any principle of reciprocity, be 
‘called upon to buy from it. If we were to shut them up within four 
walls ; confine them to their foreign trade alone, and separate their sales 
rom those of the rest of the community; let them pay (as they would 
do) a pretty swinging rent to the land-owners for the ground that they 
lived upon; be available as a corps de réserve to protect the estates. of 
those land-owners in case of war; and pay their share of the public 
-burthens (without any chance of getting part of that payment back again) ; 
_——then we hope that the most assuming agriculturist could not have any 
-elaim—for beef and mutton at his own prices—to a lease of their sto- 
-machs ? ni: 
© It will-be objected that such a division cannot be made as we describe. 
‘We cannot ‘help that ; our population. must be employed and fed. We 
cannot, with corn at the price it. fetches in this country, compete (as 
emanufacturers) abroad, with people who buy their corn. fifty per cent 
scheaper.' Gur superior capital, our, superior, machinery, the ignorance 
_ __.9f-our competitors, will enable. us: teo-de-much, but not se much astt 
__‘hasidone heretofores and: not so: much,as-this. > 4.5%) 5s © bape 
Phe admission of a moderate quantity of corn from abroad, will lower 
the »price-which the Jand-owner-of England receives for the whole 7. It 
